There is no admission that the background art disclosed in this section legally constitutes prior art.
Concrete is frequently delivered to a construction site in a cement mixer truck. The truck may have a rotating drum in which the components of concrete are mixed in route to the site. The concrete is formed by mixing cement and various aggregates, such as sand, with water to form a concrete mixture. At the site, the concrete is poured from the drum onto a surface generally through a chute, which is typically part of the cement mixer truck. Once the delivery of the concrete is complete, the chute and other components may be coated with residual concrete material. This residual concrete material should, in many instances, be cleaned off of the chute and any other components of the cement mixer truck in order to prevent hardening of the concrete in place on the components.
In cleaning the chute and other components, water, for example, may be generally sprayed onto the chute to mix with the concrete and generally become suspended therein, forming a concrete slurry. The runoff of the cleaning process may be environmentally controlled for at least some applications. For example, it may be desirable to prevent or limit the runoff of the concrete slurry and aggregates onto the ground, as the runoff materials may constitute a serious environmental hazard. Further, the runoff materials may constitute lost resources to the concrete provider.
There have been a variety of different types and kinds of systems and methods for recovering concrete. For example, reference may be made to U.S. Pat. No. 6,782,925 titled “CONCRETE RECOVERY METHOD AND SYSTEM,” issued Aug. 31, 2004.